HamariHawa

What's new

Everything we add or fix on HamariHawa, newest first. Follow along with the feed.

Wind on the map: where the air is coming from

A new "Wind right now" layer shows ink streaks drifting the way the wind is blowing across the plains, from weather-model winds refreshed every half hour (Open-Meteo). Under "Your air" the site now also says which way the wind is blowing where you are, and which big towns it is coming from and heading towards, so you can see whether smoke from fires upwind is likely to reach you.

The whole map in Google Earth

You can now open HamariHawa in Google Earth: hamarihawa.org/hamarihawa.kml. It has the same layers as the site, each refreshing on its own schedule: fires in the last 24 hours (every 15 minutes) and 7 days, air quality now in 17 cities, traffic and industry NO₂ hotspots, haze and the daily satellite photo, and the pollution sites. It is a standard KML file, so it also opens in QGIS, ArcGIS and Civil 3D. How to use it.

Major roads under the traffic NO₂ layer

The traffic and industry NO₂ layer now shows motorways and highways from OpenStreetMap underneath it, with main roads added as you zoom in. They are there for context: the satellite sees NO₂ in squares about 5 km wide, so it shows a city's traffic as one hotspot and can't pick out single roads. Thanks to a reader on Reddit for pushing on this. See Lahore.

Traffic is now listed as a pollution source

Transport is the biggest source of PM2.5 emitted in Lahore (35%) and Islamabad–Rawalpindi (53%), according to PAQI 2025, but our map only showed it as a layer option. "Traffic exhaust (NO₂ hotspots)" is now the first entry in the map's Pollution sources list, with the number of hotspots and the dates they cover.

Every source layer now says when its data is from

Fires are live, but the pollution sources are not, so each one now carries its date: methane and CO₂ plumes seen 2022 to September 2026 (Carbon Mapper), brick kilns from satellite surveys published in 2024–2025, always-hot spots from NASA's 2025 fire archive, and landfills, industrial areas and power plants from OpenStreetMap as of 17 October 2026.

HamariHawa is live

A free live map of what satellites see in the air over Pakistan and North India, in English, Urdu and Hindi. It shows every fire NASA's satellites detect, named after the nearest village; smoke, haze and traffic NO₂; known pollution sources such as 50,000 brick kilns, landfills, power plants and methane plumes; and what the air means for health in 17 cities. There is also a Pollution sites page and a share card for WhatsApp, Instagram, X and Facebook.